Playing his signature brand of rural French absurdity in stark counterpoint to the grandiose strains of a space opera, Bruno Dumont returns with The Empire: his Barbarella bourguignon, his dijionnaise Dune. The Empire is the story of two warring factions: one whose mothership resembles the palace of Versailles; the other’s as if someone glued together two Notre Dames, crypt to crypt. It follows their envoys on earth, now in human form and attempting to capture a toddler who they believe to be the Chosen One––whose mere presence makes them bow down like bodies in rigor mortis. There are blasé beheadings with lightsabers, a group of men on Boulonnais horses who call themselves the Knights of Wain, and, for no apparent reason, the commandant (Bernard Pruvost) and lieutenant (Philippe Jore) from P’tit Quinquin.
If that all sounds like a mixed bag it’s probably because The Empire is...
If that all sounds like a mixed bag it’s probably because The Empire is...
- 2/19/2024
- by Rory O'Connor
- The Film Stage
Out of the many movies you could imagine emerging from the mind of French auteur Bruno Dumont, a Star Wars parody was probably somewhere at the bottom of the list.
And yet it’s been some time since the Cannes Grand Jury Prize laureate, who broke out in the late 90s with viscerally stylized, hard-hitting works of Gallic realism like The Life of Jesus and Humanity, has strayed far from his gritty roots towards a brand of accentuated arthouse satire.
His latest effort, the sci-fi farce The Empire (L’Empire), definitely fits the latter mold, although it’s loaded with enough VFX, light saber battles, spacecrafts and prophecies to give George Lucas a run for his money. That is, if Lucas decided to set the next Star Wars in a sleepy northern French city, used a local mechanic to play one of the leads and tossed in a few flagrant sex scenes,...
And yet it’s been some time since the Cannes Grand Jury Prize laureate, who broke out in the late 90s with viscerally stylized, hard-hitting works of Gallic realism like The Life of Jesus and Humanity, has strayed far from his gritty roots towards a brand of accentuated arthouse satire.
His latest effort, the sci-fi farce The Empire (L’Empire), definitely fits the latter mold, although it’s loaded with enough VFX, light saber battles, spacecrafts and prophecies to give George Lucas a run for his money. That is, if Lucas decided to set the next Star Wars in a sleepy northern French city, used a local mechanic to play one of the leads and tossed in a few flagrant sex scenes,...
- 2/18/2024
- by Jordan Mintzer
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
The steaming chaos and viciously hurled epithets of such reality shows as “Top Chef” and “Kitchen Nightmares” thankfully have no place in “Kitchen Brigade,” which sees a gifted chef train eager amateurs with quiet hauteur, exacting shallot-slicing demands and, in time, a dose of kindness. The stakes are higher, too, in director Louis-Julien Petit’s amiable social dramedy: These young apprentices aren’t sharpening their skills merely to stay in a competition, but to stay in the country, threatened as they are with deportation if they can’t acquire relevant skills. The cruelties of the French immigration system lend a bitter back note to Petit’s otherwise upbeat heartwarmer — a mostly palatable affair that can’t wholly sidestep white-savior cliché in a rushed final course.
Petit’s previous three films — “Discount,” “Invisibles” and the Isabelle Adjani starrer “Carole Matthieu” — established his credentials as a maker of socially conscious entertainments, trading...
Petit’s previous three films — “Discount,” “Invisibles” and the Isabelle Adjani starrer “Carole Matthieu” — established his credentials as a maker of socially conscious entertainments, trading...
- 1/13/2023
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
Bruno Dumont’s movies linger somewhere between deadpan comedy and bleak existential yearning, an uneasy combo that often makes them hard to classify. From the nomadic supernatural traveler who haunts the French countryside in “Outside Satan,” to the bumbling cops investigating a seaside community in the miniseries “Li’l Quinquin,” Dumont excels at absurdist storytelling that wanders down strange pathways that either end in oddball punchlines or take a sharp turn into profundity. Not every curveball lands, but Dumont’s eerie, dreamlike storytelling has made him one of France’s most endearing and unpredictable filmmakers of the past 20-odd years.
All of which means that “Joan of Arc,” the filmmaker’s , benefits from a working familiarity of the vision behind the camera. Technically, it’s as much a part of a growing Dumont franchise as “Li’l Quinquin,” as “Joan of Arc” follows his 2017 “Jeanette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc,...
All of which means that “Joan of Arc,” the filmmaker’s , benefits from a working familiarity of the vision behind the camera. Technically, it’s as much a part of a growing Dumont franchise as “Li’l Quinquin,” as “Joan of Arc” follows his 2017 “Jeanette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc,...
- 5/20/2020
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
On a Half Clear Morning
No doubt about it — Bruno Dumont’s been busier than ever. While 2019 saw the restoration of his 1997 debut The Life of Jesus and his 1999 follow-up Humanite with their inclusion in the Criterion Collection, we also saw the theatrical release of his Coincoin and the Extra Humans stateside, while his second installment in his Joan of Arc reiteration, Joan of Arc, took home a prize following its premiere at Cannes in Un Certain Regard. Two decades prior, Dumont would average a new project once every two to three years, but he’s been more prolific than ever, already filming his latest, On a Half Clear Morning (Par ce demi-clair matin) starring Léa Seydoux, Benoit Magimel, Blanche Gardin, and produced by Rachid Bouchareb and Jean Brehat while David Chambille is lensing.…...
No doubt about it — Bruno Dumont’s been busier than ever. While 2019 saw the restoration of his 1997 debut The Life of Jesus and his 1999 follow-up Humanite with their inclusion in the Criterion Collection, we also saw the theatrical release of his Coincoin and the Extra Humans stateside, while his second installment in his Joan of Arc reiteration, Joan of Arc, took home a prize following its premiere at Cannes in Un Certain Regard. Two decades prior, Dumont would average a new project once every two to three years, but he’s been more prolific than ever, already filming his latest, On a Half Clear Morning (Par ce demi-clair matin) starring Léa Seydoux, Benoit Magimel, Blanche Gardin, and produced by Rachid Bouchareb and Jean Brehat while David Chambille is lensing.…...
- 1/3/2020
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
When Jeannette world premiered in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight in 2017, Bruno Dumont’s acolytes were left grappling with a taxonomical head-scratcher. Lo and behold, a director whose filmography had by and large consisted of austere and somber ruminations on life, death, and the divine, homing in on a historical figure that promised more of the same, and heralded a rebranding of sorts. For a martyr who’d been sanctified on the silver screen as far back as Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 The Passion of Joan of Arc, Jeannette looked like nothing that came before it. A musical rendition of the Maid of Orleans’ childhood and early teenage years, it framed the heroine’s spiritual awakening through the least likely rubric imaginable: heavy metal music. It was reckless, bonkers, and delightfully original.
Where Jeannette had effectively represented a stylistic and tonal departure from old Dumont, Joan of Arc is a detour to familiar,...
Where Jeannette had effectively represented a stylistic and tonal departure from old Dumont, Joan of Arc is a detour to familiar,...
- 6/10/2019
- by Leonardo Goi
- The Film Stage
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